Welcome to the official start of the 2026 season! This is the first year with 6 players across two pods, but drafting seems to have gone off without a hitch. Today is the “week 0” games and the first week of our game starts on Thursday.
Before the start I thought I’d like to recap where we stand and summarize the draft.

Draft report

To set the stage, lets look at who all players drafted:

For a 1-90 draft order by pod, see the supplementary tables below.
Using these draft numbers, we’ll look at some trends about team strengths and how we collectively viewed these teams and conferences.

Draft results by player

To get a first glance at how each roster stacks up superficially, we can
take all teams’ FPIs and add them up. The table below shows the total and average FPI of every player’s total roster:

But average doesn’t mean much when you’re barely playing about half the teams each week. We can also create a “starting lineup” for each player based on those FPI measures. For each player, I’ve slotted in a theoretical lineup based on our scoring format (top from each conference, then next 3 best P4 and 2 best G6 teams, then best remaining). Based on the sums of FPIs, the best projected average lineup is Bob with an FPI of 138.9. You can see the full results in the table below:

Next, we can look at the “bench” for each player, or the FPI of their remaining 14 teams. Bob again has the highest:

Of course, this is a very shallow prediction – FPI in the early season isn’t very valuable with no data to base it on, and it doesn’t account for the game, and even when it’s got data it’ll be of limited value because of the huge variance in game-to-game results.

Warning: Dangerously shoddy methodology projections

As I said, FPI isn’t a super great metric to base predictions on at this stage. But let’s just go for it. In this section, I’ve made a really rough roster-strength screener. I got the FPI measure for both teams in every FBS game this season (and put in a flat -30 for FCS opponents). For each game, I added +1.5 FPI to the home team and -1.5 to the away team to account for home-field advantage. Then, for every game where the favorite had at least a +1.0 adjFPI advantage, I added that advantage to the player total who owned them. The table below shows the total favorable FPI of all teams for each player for all games where they have an FPI advantage.

By that metric, the top team this year is Notre Dame with a +282 (owned by Jacob and Dan), followed by Texas Tech at +258 (Jacob and Bruce), Indiana at +252 (Bob and Zach), and Ohio State at +250 (Bruce and Dylan).
One thing to look out for as the season progresses is how schedules line up. It’s possible that some of us may have a lot of really favorable games but they fall on weeks where they can’t all be played, leaving a lot of points orphaned.

Draft results by team and conference

The more interesting details, in my mind, are looking at the draft and seeing how the six of us collectively ranked and prioritized these teams.
There was very strong consensus across the top of the board: the top 5 teams were the same, just shuffled, and of the next 5 there were 3 that were only 1 pick different between pods. Below are the top 10 (in this section, teams were score 90-0 where first pick got 90, last pick got 1, and undrafted teams got 0).

There were 34 teams that went undrafted in both pods, and 28 teams that went undrafted in one pod. Of that 28, these are the top 10 teams that were picked in one pod but not the other:

The clear outlier here is UConn, picked a full 9 spots higher than the next highest singleton and solidly in the top 1/3 of the draft. Overall, it seems like the White Pod was more likely to reach on some of these teams that we were less in agreement about, with 4 of the next 5.
There are also some notable disagreements among teams that both pods drafted. The clear winner in this regard is Delaware, who was drafted 64 spots higher in Orange Pod than White Pod. The biggest disagreements are shown in this table:

All of these teams are probably going to be pretty bad, so there’s not a lot of damage done here. But this may be an example of the opportunity cost of these picks; the player that picked them might have been able to get a better team elsewhere and still picked up this one later in the draft.

Here you can see all the picks vs FPI which represents the trend nicely. In the early picks, not only is there a higher percentage of high FPI picks early, but the correlation is much stronger. As we get to the later rounds, there’s still an obviously downward trend, but the correlation is so loose it’s probably statistically insignicant (I didn’t do the math, just eyeballed it).

There’s a noticeable cluster of highly picked but not super high FPI teams, highlighed in the red ellipse. These could be teams to look out for; they probably had a lot of talent but a lot of question marks, so if things come together they could be good for a ton of points, or they could be this year’s version of 2025 Penn State. There are 5 of these teams that are picked in both pods, and 4 in one pod but not the other. These teams by player selected:

Draft results by conference

Next, we can look at how we all drafted the conferences. It should surprise no one that the SEC and the Big Ten are head-and-shoulders ahead of the pack, reflecting that the “P4” is more like “P2, and also 2 pretty good conferences.” But because both are so big and so good at the top, they actually had a lower pick rate – between the 6 of us, we only picked 12 SEC and 11 Big Ten teams (out of 16 and 18, respectively) but we picked 8/10 C-USA and Mountain West, all but one Big 12 team, and every Pac “12” team (8/8, obviously). The table below lists the conferences by total pick points:

We picked the ACC and Big 12 surprisingly low, which reflects (and possibly validates) my belief that those conferences are really a crapshoot beyond Miami and Texas Tech. There are so many teams in each that are nearly interchangeable that it’s better for the mechanics of this game to pick the G6 teams with the higher marginal value of getting the decent G6 teams before they’re gone and you’re stuck with something abysmal.
That is more apparent in this next table. In this table, I’ve switched from the average to the top n teams in each conference (top single team, top 2 teams, top 4 teams, and top 8 teams):

This, again, at least confirms that I’m not alone but also possibly validates my opinion that the Big Ten has overtaken the SEC in the elite, top of conference teams, but the SEC is deeper and has the best middle group of teams of any conference. And it also puts the conferences in roughly an order that would be hard to debate (SEC and Big Ten above all, ACC and Big 12 below them but well above the G6, and American well above the rest of the G6).

Here is a graphic representation of how the conferences stacked up. The G6 FPIs show why raw FPI totals aren’t necessarily a perfect metric. If you overdraft P4 teams, you could have a lot of relatively higher FPI teams sitting on the bench every week and open spots in the G6.

Next up

With all that said, the season is about as predictable as the weather so it may very well turn out that none of us know what we’re talking about and these picks were all terrible. But that’s the fun of sports and this game.
As previously stated, week 0 starts today. Between us, every game has at least one team owned by one player, and in 3/8 games both teams are owned in both pods. Several of us will be banking points and all of us will be getting some data on at least a few of our teams. These games (and their teams’ respective owners) are:

• Eastern Michigan (Zach) vs Sacramento State (Jacob)
• Florida State (Dan) vs New Mexico State (unowned)
• North Dakota State (Bob, Dylan) vs Jacksonville State (Bruce, Zach)
• Stanford (unowned) vs Hawai’i (Bob, Zach)
• TCU (Dan, Jacob) vs North Carolina (unowned)
• USC (Bruce, Dylan) vs San José State (unowned)
• Virginia (Bruce, Jacob) vs NC State (Bruce, Dylan)
• UNLV (Bruce, Jacob) vs Memphis (Bruce, Dylan)

Week 1 starts Thursday, September 3, with 11 Thursday night games and goes through the Labor Day game on Monday, September 7.

My picks for games of the day this week (week 1)

• Thursday – only 1 game looks even remotely intriguing – Colorado @ Georgia Tech (7/11 games are FBS vs FCS, and 2 of the 3 FBS games feature UMass and Akron who might actually be worse than some of the FCS teams)
• Friday – San Jose State @ Eastern Michigan – both are dark horse possiblities to win their conferences or at least be competitive, and it’s the only game with a single digit spread. Side note: only one other game has a <20 spread, and that’s Toledo at Michigan State (MSU-10). Mel Tucker really blew that program up; how hard is it to just be normal?
• Saturday – Boise State @ Oregon(afternoon), Clemson @ LSU (primetime), UNLV @ Hawai’i (late night)
• Sunday – only day where all the games look at least decent, my pick would be Louisville @ Ole Miss which is literally the only ranked vs ranked matchup of the whole weekend (side note – what are we even doing here if that’s possible!?). But Wisconsin @ Notre Dame has an outside chance; Wisconsin could be a sneaky good team.
• Monday – only one game on Monday, SMU @ FSU

Matchups for week 1

• Bob vs Zach
• Bruce vs Jacob
• Dan vs Dylan

Conclusions

No conclusions, just wanted to get your attention to say good luck and have fun! Looking forward to a great season.

Supplementary tables

The full 1–90 pick order for each pod, referenced above.

Orange Pod — full draft order

White Pod — full draft order

Summary

Last updated: 06:00 14-May-2026

Player Picks

Jacob

Parlays

Parlay1 (dead) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 3

• Washington
• Troy
• NC State
• Pittsburgh
• Missouri

Parlay2 (dead) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 2

• Utah State
• Clemson
• BYU
• Fresno State

Parlay3 (dead) — Correct: 3, Incorrect: 1

• Louisville
• Northwestern
• Louisiana Tech
• USC

Parlay4 (hit) — Correct: 5, Incorrect: 0

• Ole Miss
• Oregon
• UTSA
• Army
• Utah

Parlay5 (dead) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 2

• Louisiana
• Western Michigan
• Western Kentucky
• UNLV

Parlay6 (dead) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 1

• Vanderbilt
• Texas
• Texas State

Parlay7 (dead) — Correct: 3, Incorrect: 1

• Georgia Southern
• Duke
• Navy
• Mississippi State

Single Picks

Totals — Correct: 6, Incorrect: 4

• South Florida
• Arkansas State
• Alabama
• Texas A&M
• Hawai’i
• Minnesota
• North Texas
• Houston
• Tennessee
• Arizona
• Texas Tech
• Indiana
• Georgia
• Ohio State
• Indiana
• Georgia
• Indiana

Zach Crockett

Parlays

bigfaves (hit) — Correct: 5, Incorrect: 0

• Ole Miss
• Oregon
• Northwestern
• Utah
• Texas State

cfp1 (dead) — Correct: 1, Incorrect: 1

• Alabama
• Texas A&M

midfaves (dead) — Correct: 3, Incorrect: 1

• Washington
• South Florida
• Louisville
• UTSA

parlay3 (dead) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 1

• Missouri
• Louisiana Tech
• Texas

parlay4 (dead) — Correct: 1, Incorrect: 1

• Pittsburgh
• BYU

tnparlay (dead) — Correct: 1, Incorrect: 2

• NC State
• Tennessee
• Vanderbilt

Single Picks

Totals — Correct: 7, Incorrect: 13

• Troy
• Louisiana
• Arkansas State
• Kennesaw State
• Washington State
• Southern Miss
• UNLV
• California
• Minnesota
• Penn State
• UConn
• Miami (OH)
• North Texas
• Houston
• App State
• USC
• Arizona State
• Cincinnati
• SMU
• Mississippi State
• Texas Tech
• Indiana
• Georgia
• Ohio State
• Texas Tech
• Georgia
• Texas Tech

Dylan

Parlays

BigFav (hit) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 0

• Utah
• Texas State

EZ (hit) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 0

• Ole Miss
• Oregon

Hootyhoo (dead) — Correct: 1, Incorrect: 1

• Kennesaw State
• Alabama
• Alabama

PapaJohn (dead) — Correct: 1, Incorrect: 2

• Louisville
• Tennessee
• Vanderbilt

Risky (hit) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 0

• Delaware
• Arkansas State

StandOnBusiness (hit) — Correct: 2, Incorrect: 0

• Virginia
• Texas

Single Picks

Totals — Correct: 10, Incorrect: 16

• Washington
• Troy
• Old Dominion
• NC State
• Texas A&M
• Utah State
• Southern Miss
• UNLV
• Hawai’i
• Northwestern
• New Mexico
• UTSA
• Pittsburgh
• Clemson
• UConn
• Georgia Tech
• Fresno State
• North Texas
• LSU
• App State
• Louisiana Tech
• USC
• Duke
• Cincinnati
• Arizona
• Mississippi State
• Texas Tech
• Georgia
• Ohio State
• Texas Tech
• Georgia
• Georgia

Dan

Parlays

No parlays.

Single Picks

Totals — Correct: 27, Incorrect: 12

• Washington
• Jacksonville State
• South Florida
• Delaware
• Arkansas State
• Western Michigan
• NC State
• Oklahoma
• Texas A&M
• Ole Miss
• Oregon
• Utah State
• Louisville
• Southern Miss
• Ohio
• Hawai’i
• Northwestern
• Minnesota
• UTSA
• East Carolina
• Clemson
• Army
• BYU
• Fresno State
• San Diego State
• Missouri
• Houston
• App State
• Louisiana Tech
• Illinois
• TCU
• Vanderbilt
• Duke
• Texas
• Utah
• Texas State
• Cincinnati
• SMU
• Mississippi State

Brady Valliere

Parlays

No parlays.

Single Picks

Totals — Correct: 20, Incorrect: 19

• Washington
• Jacksonville State
• South Florida
• Louisiana
• Arkansas State
• Kennesaw State
• NC State
• Oklahoma
• Miami
• Ole Miss
• Oregon
• Utah State
• Louisville
• Western Kentucky
• UNLV
• Hawai’i
• Northwestern
• Minnesota
• Florida International
• Pittsburgh
• Clemson
• UConn
• Georgia Tech
• Fresno State
• North Texas
• Missouri
• Houston
• App State
• Louisiana Tech
• Tennessee
• USC
• Vanderbilt
• Duke
• Michigan
• Utah
• Rice
• Cincinnati
• SMU
• Wake Forest
• Oregon
• Indiana
• Georgia
• Miami
• Oregon
• Miami
• Miami

Last updated: 2025-12-07 09:47:49

Current Standings Table

Individual Player Statuses

Dylan

Bob

Zach

Jacob

Scores and Max Scores

Standings after Week 14

	Record (Win-loss-pass)	Score (points behind)	Matchplay Points (points behind)
Bob	163-37-24	3656 (–)	45.0 (–)
Dan	145-52-27	2452 (-1204)	18.0 (-27)
Jacob	120-36-68	2338 (-1318)	15.5 (-29.5)
Zach	139-42-43	2481 (-1175)	19.5 (-25.5)

Bob

Results

	Team	Score	Opponent Score	Net Score
ACC	NC State	42	19	23
Big 10	Oregon	26	14	12
Big 12	Texas Tech	49	0	49
SEC	Ole Miss	38	19	19
P4 Flex 1	Louisville	41	0	41
P4 Flex 2	Utah	31	21	10
P4 Flex 3	Alabama	27	20	7
P4 Flex 4	Pass	0	0	0
PAC12 Memorial P4 Subtotal	–	254	93	161
American Athletic	North Texas	52	25	27
Conference USA	Kennesaw State	48	42	6
Mid-American	Toledo	21	3	18
MWC	Fresno State	41	14	27
Sun Belt	Old Dominion	27	10	17
G5 Flex 1	Air Force	42	21	21
G5 Flex 2	East Carolina	42	3	39
G5 Subtotal	–	273	118	155
Wild Card	Pass	0	0	0
Total	–	527	211	316

Dan

Results

Jacob

Results

Zach

Results

Bob

Dan

Jacob

Zach

Scores and Max Scores

Standings after Week 13

	Record (Win-loss-pass)	Score (points behind)	Matchplay Points (points behind)
Bob	149-37-22	3340 (–)	41.0 (–)
Dan	133-49-26	2264 (-1076)	16.0 (-25)
Jacob	110-33-65	2161 (-1179)	14.5 (-26.5)
Zach	132-37-39	2371 (-969)	19.5 (-21.5)

Bob

Results

	Team	Score	Opponent Score	Net Score
ACC	Florida State	11	21	-10
Big 10	Michigan	45	20	25
Big 12	Utah	51	47	4
SEC	Alabama	56	0	56
P4 Flex 1	Oregon	42	27	15
P4 Flex 2	Washington	48	14	34
P4 Flex 3	Vanderbilt	45	17	28
P4 Flex 4	Pass	0	0	0
PAC12 Memorial P4 Subtotal	–	298	146	152
American Athletic	North Texas	56	24	32
Conference USA	Middle Tennessee	31	17	14
Mid-American	Toledo	38	9	29
MWC	Fresno State	17	28	-11
Sun Belt	Old Dominion	45	10	35
G5 Flex 1	East Carolina	24	58	-34
G5 Flex 2	Kennesaw State	41	34	7
G5 Subtotal	–	252	180	72
Wild Card	UConn	48	45	3
Total	–	598	371	227

Dan

Results

Jacob

Results

Zach

Results

Bob

Dan

Jacob

Zach

Scores and Max Scores

Standings after Week 12

	Record (Win-loss-pass)	Score (points behind)	Matchplay Points (points behind)
Bob	137-34-21	3113 (–)	39.0 (–)
Dan	123-45-24	2065 (-1048)	15.0 (-24)
Jacob	101-31-60	1965 (-1148)	14.5 (-24.5)
Zach	120-36-36	2103 (-1010)	15.5 (-23.5)

Bob

Results

	Team	Score	Opponent Score	Net Score
ACC	Florida State	34	14	20
Big 10	Oregon	42	13	29
Big 12	Texas Tech	48	9	39
SEC	Ole Miss	34	24	10
P4 Flex 1	Washington	49	13	36
P4 Flex 2	Utah	55	28	27
P4 Flex 3	Michigan	24	22	2
P4 Flex 4	Alabama	21	23	-2
PAC12 Memorial P4 Subtotal	–	307	146	161
American Athletic	North Texas	53	24	29
Conference USA	Kennesaw State	26	35	-9
Mid-American	Toledo	24	3	21
MWC	Fresno State	24	3	21
Sun Belt	Old Dominion	33	0	33
G5 Flex 1	Georgia Southern	45	40	5
G5 Flex 2	UConn	26	16	10
G5 Subtotal	–	231	121	110
Wild Card	Oregon State	14	31	-17
Total	–	552	298	254

Dan

Results

Jacob

Results

Zach

Results